Every once in a while the big brains in science come to some new
conclusions. The newest about black holes may change the whole theory
about what goes in never comes out. [New
Scientist]
Thought process about how black holes work is changing
Grok Headline matches for Thought process about how black holes work is changing
Chess computer's thought process
Chess computer's thought process09/03/2004 10:36 AM Cory Doctorow:
These breathtaking visualizations of the decision-tree explored by a
chess-playing computer are great.
A view into the workings of a chess-playing program that must make
millions of decisions in each game. In this piece we explore the
notion that our lives consist of a vast sequence of choices.
Internet Changing The Home Buying Process11/14/2003 12:38 PM The common refrain in the early days of internet commercialization was
that it would help get rid of "the middleman". The problem with this,
of course, was that some middlemen (and women) are there for a pretty
good reason. However, some areas are clearly getting squeezed. Real
estate agents are discovering that most people coming to them h
ave done much of the necessary research online and don't need
nearly as much hand holding throughout the process. Because of that,
they also don't expect to pay commissions as high as they used to.
Having the real estate agent still helps, but it's in a diminished
capacity. Of course, the internet also helps the agents by weeding
out those who are less likely to be interested, saving them time on
wasted house showings. Again, it sounds like this is a case where the
internet is helping to change the role of a job, but not necessarily
eliminate it.
iPod the innovation and thought process behind it's design
Every small company has challenges and one of those challenges is
always money. Just as I have big dreams and ideas of where I would
like to take Geek News Central it is limited by the amount of money I
have to invest in the site. I have started the process of looking at
hiring some advisors and possibly if my cash holds out having some
consultation meetings with people I think can help us.
My curiosity is always peaked when I read stories about what VC's
are looking for. I know from our refereal logs that several VC Firms
read our site on a regular basis, but you need a revenue model to draw
financial interest. Quite honestly most blogs do not have a revenue
model. All I can hope for now is that they read our articles and my
opinon points to find information on new technolgies that they can
invest in.
Like many Blogs we have tinkered with ways to raise money and may
be introducing a premium service in the future, but we have to work
out the content details along with working out the details of who we
are going to target that premium content to.
Most of the companies getting VC attention are companies that are
either responsible for the software that those of use to blog. The
tools we aggreate data with aka Newz Crawler, NewsGator etc. Plus the
companies that analyze the information we put out. But the individuals
down in the trenches producing 100's of thousands of Blogs are
basically helping other people's dreams come true.
For now I am happy if I get a few donations to help us with
bandwidth cost. Never planned to get rich but it's the American Dream.
For some real insight to what a VC is looking for read his article
great information and should give you a better understanding of what
the thought process is. [
Feld Thoughts]
No black holes?
No black holes?04/03/2005 05:55 PM My first guess about this article, Black holes 'do not exist', was
that it was an April Fool's joke I was just seeing. But the journal is
Nature, and the physicist making the claim is from Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory...
Stephen Hawking has changed his mind on his theory of black holes.
ABC News has reported that Hawking now sides with particle physicists
who believe that any matter swallowed by a black hole can’t just
disappear. On the contrary, the matter must eventually generate a
specific output….
Do black holes really exist? One physicist is challenging
conventional wisdom with his view that what we call black holes are
actually stars made of dark energy, formed by the collapse of some
stars. If true, there goes a staple of science fiction writers.
In addition, there's news on a "cyberman" who can control a robotic
arm with his mind. This week's Science.Ars also covers a rather
alarming report on the impact humankind is having on our home
planet.
The most comprehensive global study on humankind’s
impact on the planet has just been published, and it’s anything but
good news. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, con-ducted over 4
years by 1,300 scientists from 95 countries was released on Wednesday,
and makes grim reading.
Read on for a summary of the report as well as other bits of news
from the world of science.
Black holes - maybe there is a way out after all (Reuters)
Black holes - maybe there is a way out after all (Reuters)07/15/2004 08:40 AM Reuters - Black holes, those fearsome galactic traps from which not
even light can escape, may not be quite so
terminally destructive after all, according to cosmologist Stephen
Hawking.
Black Holes No More -- Introducing the Gravastar01/07/2004 02:38 PM Mark Eymer observes: "From the Space.com article: 'Emil Mottola of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pawel Mazur of the University of
South Carolina ...
Hawking U-turn on black holes
Hawking U-turn on black holes07/15/2004 01:43 PM Stephen Hawking is saying that he was wrong about a key argument he
put forward nearly 30 years ago about the behaviour of black holes.
Hawking Says He Was Wrong About Black Holes
Hawking Says He Was Wrong About Black Holes07/21/2004 12:42 PM Dr. Stephen W. Hawking said today that black holes do not destroy
matter and energy and that information can escape.
About Those Fearsome Black Holes? Never Mind
About Those Fearsome Black Holes? Never Mind07/22/2004 02:43 AM Dr. Stephen W. Hawking declared at a scientific conference that
physics is safe and information can escape from a black hole.
Physicist Rethinks Theory on Black Holes (AP)
Physicist Rethinks Theory on Black Holes (AP)07/21/2004 07:59 PM AP - After 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was
wrong about black holes. The renowned Cambridge University physicist
formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the
celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of
objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out "in a mangled
form."
Hawking: Black Holes Mangle Matter, Energy (AP)07/21/2004 10:59 AM AP - Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Wednesday that black
holes, the mysterious massive vortexes formed from collapsed stars, do
not destroy everything they consume and instead can fire out matter
and energy "in a mangled form."
Down with Chip 'n PIN, mini-black holes and cyber humans
One
of the value propositions for Knowledge Management is to improve
decision-making. At a recent Toronto KM Consortium meeting, we agreed
to study whether KM actually achieves this objective.
When we looked for a model of the decision-making process, one that
seemed especially intriguing, in light of recent controversies about
its authors' decision-making skill, was that used by NASA, illustrated
in the table at right.
Whether we decide instinctively (whether to flee or fight), rationally
(what laptop to buy), or morally, aesthetically or emotionally (who to
vote for in the next election), or using some combination of the
above,
we do tend to follow this process. Our decision criteria can be
objective or subjective. The process can be one-pass or iterative,
formal or informal. In some cases we 'back into' the process -- making
a possibly impulsive decision and then attempting to justify or test
it
by going back through the process. The facts and assessment of
unknowns
can be exhaustive and methodical or cursory, often depending on the
importance of the decision and the consequences of making the wrong
one, though I've heard more than one CEO pride himself on his ability
to make fast decisions with incomplete information, even if better
information was available.
Some of us are prone to groupthink -- unduly influenced by the
preferences of others, even if those preferences are uninformed,
illogical or volatile -- you see this often in election campaigns.
There are different styles of weighing alternatives, too. Some prefer
to find consensus, and consult extensively with others whose judgement
they trust -- recent studies indicate, with the benefit of hindsight,
that such an approach yields superior decisions. Others take an
adversarial, black-hat or 'devil's advocate' position to try to get
opposing perspectives before making decisions. In his new book, the
Wisdom of Crowds, James
Surowiecki cites the
importance
of careful design of a decision-making or advisory group (most
critically that they be informed, representative of different
stakeholders and perspectives, and independent thinkers).
We tend to be influenced differently by others in the decision-making
process, depending on our personal values and our position in the
organization or group -- some of us are deeply influenced by others'
authority (status or education), reputation, or trustworthiness (which
means peers' views get more weight than either superiors' or
subordinates').
Inaccurate, incomplete or biased research or debate can also produce
inappropriate decisions -- some of us are more aware of 'spin'
in what we read and hear than others. Marketers have perfected
techniques that range from manipulative to dishonest to influence
customer buying decisions. And as these fall from favour, subtler,
more
subversive techniques -- like story-telling -- are taking their place.
Some legal decisions are considered so critical that there is a
special
standard of fairness -- "due process'.
Technology sometimes gives us the opportunity to defer making
decisions
and keep many options open until more facts are available and the risk
of decision error drops -- rapid prototyping for example.
Here are four brief stories about decisions, that reveal good and bad
decision-making processes:
A friend of mine was hiring for a research-analyst
position. There were three excellent candidates, but all four
interviewers rated a tall, well-spoken, attractive, well-dressed young
man as their clear choice. The word three of them used to describe his
superior je ne sais quoi was
'presence'. It turned out presence was all he had -- his research
skills were questionable, and the interviewers later kicked themselves
for not looking more closely at his sample work-product before hiring
him. Before he could be hired, he quit for a much higher-paying job in
PR, a job he had no credentials for, and where he is now Vice
President.
A colleague was trying to decide between two new
house
models. He and his wife were each leaning slightly towards a different
choice. He drew up a chart listing all the buying criteria they cared
about, weighted each criterion and rated each house on each criterion.
The house his wife preferred got a higher total score, but my
colleague
wasn't convinced. He kept trying to rig the numbers or weights to
change the scores, but couldn't do it, so he relented and they bought
the house his wife preferred. A year later he was delighted with the
decision, and couldn't understand how he was attached to the other
house at all.
A woman I know was going out with two guys, and was
under
growing pressure to make a decision. All her friends preferred Guy A,
with whom she shared many interests, over Guy B, who spoke little
English and with whom she had almost nothing in common. She chose Guy
B
anyway, citing 'pure chemistry', and eventually married him.
Twenty-five years later, it was obviously the right choice -- they're
still together and very happy.
A small Canadian company was successfully courted by
a foreign company that appeared, on the surface, to be a perfect tactical
fit -- the Canadian company had great products and R&D, while the
foreign company had lots of cash and market presence around the world.
Five years later everyone from the Canadian company was gone and all
that was left was a warehouse. The strategies and cultures of the two companies, it was clear in
hindsight, were completely incompatible.
This year, Canadians and Americans will both decide on a new federal
government. The electoral process in both countries is badly flawed,
the electorate is largely ignorant of the issues, and is being
deliberately misled by campaign advertising, while the media, in
typical fashion, are oversimplifying many of the choices and
completely
disregarding others. The only thing we know for sure is that, in both
countries, more people will consciously decide not to
vote than will vote for any of the alternatives. I wonder what
that tells us about The Wisdom of
Crowds?
CPS: DAVE POLLARD'S CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS
In previous articles I've
described the Innovation Process of gurus like Clay
Christensen and Peter
Drucker (and my own), and a process for tapping the
Wisdom of Crowds.
Since then, I've talked to several business leaders about these
processes, and they suggested I integrate them together to create a
Creative Problem-Solving Process. The diagram above is the first draft
of this CPS process.
It appears there may be as many as 12 steps in the process involved in
solving problems or making critical decisions, whether in a business
context or a broader social context. In most cases, many of these
steps
are side-stepped or short-circuited, often because the problem-solvers
or decision-makers think they already have the information or
perspective that doing them would provide. Perhaps this is why so many
unimaginative solutions are developed and so many bad decisions are
made?
The process of solving problems, when it's undertaken thoroughly, can
involve three different forms of interactivity (conversation,
collaboration and canvassing), in engaging the energies of three
different aggregations of people (individuals, teams, and 'crowds').
The following table summarizes the 12 steps, and the interactivity,
methods, deliverables and some facilitation tools for each:
Action
Interactivity
Methods
Deliverables
Some Tools
A Teach
Conversation
Training
Competencies
Creativity
Techniques,
Collaboration Skills
B. Listen
Canvassing
Continuous Scan,
Intelligence-Gathering
Identified Needs,
Insights
Environmental
Scanning,
Minto Fact-Based Research
C. Understand
Conversation
Analysis
Root Causes
Root Cause
Analysis,
Fishbone Diagrams
D. Organize
Collaboration
Coordination
Solution Team,
Improvisational Plan
'Getting Things
Done',
PKM, Improv
E. Think Ahead
Conversation
Iteration
Future State
Visions
Thinking-Ahead
Process,
Future-State Visioning
F. Reach Out
Canvassing
Engagement
Commitment,
Attention,
Status Quo Dissatisfaction
'ChangeThis'
Manifestos
G. Brainstorm
Conversation,
Collaboration
Creation,
Ideation
Solution
Alternatives,
Innovation Culture
Accelerated Solutions
Environment
H. Survey
Canvassing
Qualifying
Collective Wisdom,
Consensus
Wisdom of Crowds
process
I. Design
Collaboration
Crafting
Prototypes
Rapid Prototyping,
Natural Design
J. Experiment
Collaboration
Parallel Processing
Proof of Concept
True Collaboration
Training
K. Challenge
Collaboration
Questioning,
Critical Thinking
Solution
Qualification,
Issues & Landmines
Seven Thinking Hats
L. Deploy
Canvassing
Offering
Solutions
Project Management,
One-Step-at-a-Time
Applying the process to a
business problem:
Nash Instruments makes digital thermometers and other medical
instruments for hospitals. They manufacture in Mississippi, taking
advantage of low labour costs, but foreign competitors manufacturing
in
China have undercut them. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy,
and 300 employees are depending on Nash's ingenuity to reinvent their
company to save their jobs.
So we start by teaching the core Solution Team of Nash the process,
and
creativity techniques so they can imagine a successful future for
their
company, not limited to incremental improvements. Then, with the
Solution Team, we canvass customers and end-users of the company's
products and other similar instruments, and find out what untapped
needs they have. We also study trends in the market, and scan across
other industries, science, technologies, and nature, to surface new
developments that might be adapted or applied to Nash's products,
processes, platforms, technologies, supply chain or distribution
channels, core competencies, customer experience, brand, service or
community wrap-arounds, or business model. Perhaps we discover that
what customers are most unhappy with is the poor quality, ambiguity
and
reliability of these instruments -- and that what customers want
aren't
cheaper instruments,
but
simpler, more durable, more accurate ones. That they are buying the
cheap ones made in China only because none of them differentiate
themselves in other ways.
The third step is to analyze the root causes of the company's current
predicament. We know from the previous step that price really isn't
the
differentiating factor that's hurting the company's sales, but why
isn't the company, with its skilled, domestic workforce, able to
produce a better product? And are there other aspects to the
undifferentiated 'customer experience', such as service quality? Or a
distribution or marketing problem? Or lack of product diversity or
innovation? Suppose we discover that the root problems are that the
company has compromised on materials quality to try to reduce cost,
that it's slow to exploit new technologies, and that it has developed
a
reputation for unresponsive service. Once we know this, we refine the
Solution Team, and develop the plan and timeline for solving the root
problems.and meeting the untapped customer needs.
Then we conduct Thinking-the-Customer-Ahead sessions, using an
iterative 'what-if' process to enable some of Nash's most
forward-thinking customers and potential customers to understand where
their businesses, and instrumentation needs, are headed, which in turn
allows Nash to craft a Future State Vision that satisfies those needs.
Maybe we discover that the future of medical instrumentation is
wireless, that displays are going to have to be flatter and sharper,
that measurements in several medical technologies will need to be two
orders of magnitude more precise, and that in some cases the tools
will
become so sophisticated that the instrument manufacturer will have to
become part of the virtual medical team, on call 24/7 to assist in
interpretation of the results.
And then we reach out to the larger constituency, all current and
potential customers and end-users, articulating the promise that Nash
could deliver and fomenting dissatisfaction with the status quo,
creating a sense of urgency in the minds of customers and end-users,
articulating the unmet need, and also creating that sense of urgency
in
Nash's own people.
Next we do the creative work of inventing or reinventing products,
processes, platforms, technologies, channels, brands, and even
business
models, and growing the core competencies needed to deliver on them.
But we don't put all our eggs in one basket: We develop a suite of
alternative solutions. And
then we use the Wisdom of
Crowds
process to present them to the 'crowd', as large a group of existing
and potential customers and users and employees as possible, and use
the crowd's collective intelligence to help us select the best of
these
alternatives before taking
them to market. Nash's reputation is a problem -- trying to go upscale
with a new generation of sophisticated, precise instruments will be a
marketing nightmare. maybe a whole new division with a new name is
needed? And should the company try to overcome its employees'
near-total ignorance of how hospitals use its instruments, so they can
offer virtual interpretation, or leave this niche to others? And
should
it overhaul its supply chain in favour of better-quality material
suppliers, or even bring production of these materials in-house and
cut
out the middleman?
Now, with the confidence that we have the optimal solutions, we can
design working prototypes of these solutions, and we can
collaboratively run parallel experiments with different
implementations
of these solutions, failing fast and inexpensively to winnow out the
implementations that don't work in practice. How would wireless
instruments avoid interference with, and from, other medical
technologies in the operating room and on the patient's night-table.
What different techniques can be used to increase read-out precision
without a commensurate increase in equipment cost? And when medical
instruments need to be made in two 'flavours', one for sophisticated
hospital use and the other for patients to self-diagnose and
self-monitor, how do the price points differ and how should
functionality and ease-of-use be traded off? Should Nash even be in
both markets?
And then the implementations that succeed must pass the final hurdle,
another collaborative process that encourages skeptical, critical
thinking people in the organization to challenge whether this solution
really is optimal, and unearth landmines and other problems the
developers may not have thought about. Maybe the designers didn't
consider that baby-boomer patients' eyes are weakening and the display
in a new consumer product just isn't large enough? Or that one of the
new suppliers of a critical material is in financial difficulty?
Once the solutions have passed this final test, they're ready for
launch. The launch of dramatically new products, processes and
technologies is a difficult process, and if not done properly and
quickly can make an enormously promising innovation into a production
or market failure. The launch needs careful project management, using
a
rigorous, tightly-controlled, one-step-at-a-time process.
It's all common sense. The reason it is so rarely used is that few
organizations have the competencies to do more than two or three of
the
12 steps effectively. I've worked on all 12 steps at one point or
another in my career, and they are not
easy to master, but when they're done well, they yield astonishing
results. The answer, I think, isn't just to bring in consultants to
facilitate the process and then breeze out again. Advisers need to
teach businesspeople how to do this for themselves, and then steward
them through the process a couple of times to ensure they follow it
properly. In a world where innovation will soon again be recognized as
the only sustainable competitive business advantage, learning this
process may the most important education for tomorrow's business
leaders.
And there's no reason to believe this same process couldn't be used to
effectively address broader social, economic and environmental
problems
as well. I'll explore that in a future article.
When I was younger, I was both
a
socialist and a supporter of 'free' trade. Both concepts make eminent
sense in an ideal world. Take away the complexity of real world
affairs
and debate the benefits of either concept strictly philosophically,
and
the 'no' side doesn't stand a chance. Unfortunately, or fortunately if
you have an ideological opposition to either or both concepts, neither
concept works in the real world -- in fact, they both backfire and
make
things worse. The problem is that the elite wealthy and powerful who
control the media and most world governments are violently opposed to
socialism and selfish supporters of 'free' trade. So while the myth of
the viability of socialism as a workable political system has been
soundly and widely discredited, the myth of the viability of 'free'
trade as a workable economic system is cynically perpetuated by the
powers that be.
I've written
at length about why 'free' trade doesn't work: Why in a world of
massive, hidden government subsidies it creates a hugely unfair
playing
field, how it leads to unaffordable prices for medicines in the third
world and hence causes immiseration and death, why it leads to a 'race
to the bottom' of social and environmental standards worldwide, how it
encourages unsustainable agricultural and manufacturing processes at
the cost of sustainable ones, how it leads to an inexorable
deterioration in quality of products and services etc. But some of my
readers still say that by advocating the repeal of 'free' trade
agreements and replacing them with import duties on goods and services
that cannot reasonably be
produced domestically, I'm encouraging the continued impoverishment of
the third world.
So here
is an article, written late last year by Timothy White of Dollars & Sense magazine that
shows that for Mexico, a country that has embraced 'free' trade openly
and honourably, whose people have done everything they can to make it
work, and whose government and people had such high hopes for it,
NAFTA
and 'free' trade in general have been an unmitigated disaster. If you
want to know the real truth about 'free' trade, please read the article in its
entirety
-- it is free of economic jargon and political rhetoric, and full of
astonishing data on the cost of 'free' trade to that country.
Here is the synopsis at the end of the article, emphases mine:
NAFTA took effect in 1994, but
the "neoliberal" experiment began in the mid-1980s following Mexico's
1982 debt crisis. Ten years into NAFTA and nearly twenty years into
neoliberalism, the track record, drawn from official World Bank and
Mexican government figures, is poor:
Economic growth has been
slow.
Since 1985, Mexico has seen average annual per capita real growth of
just 1%, compared to 3.4% from 1960 to 1980.
Job growth has
been sluggish.
There has been little job creation, falling far short of the demand
from young people entering the labour force. Manufacturing, one of the
few sectors to show significant economic growth, has registered only
marginal net job creation since NAFTA took effect.
The new
jobs are not good
jobs. Nearly half of all new
formal-sector jobs created under NAFTA do
not include any of the benefits mandated by Mexican law (social
security, vacations, holidays, etc.). One-third of the economically
active population now works in the "informal" sector.
Wages
have declined. The real
minimum wage is down 60% since 1982, 23% since NAFTA's inception.
Wages
in all sectors have followed suit.
Poverty has
increased.
According to Mexico's most respected poverty researchers, the number
of
households living in poverty has grown 80% since 1984, with nearly 80%
of Mexico's people now below the poverty line, up from 59% in
1984.
Income distribution has become more lopsided, making Mexico one of the
hemisphere's most unequal societies.
The rural sector is in
crisis.
Four-fifths of rural
Mexicans live in poverty, over half in extreme
poverty. Migration levels remain high despite unprecedented
risks due
to increased U.S. border patrols.
Imports surpass exports. The
export boom has been outpaced by an import boom, in part due to
intrafirm trade within multinationals.
The environment has
deteriorated. The Mexican government estimates that from 1985 to 1999,
the economic costs of
environmental degradation amounted to 10% of
annual GDP, or $36 billion per year. These costs dwarf economic
growth,
which amounted to only $9.4 billion annually.
This
is a story that could be told and re-told in almost any third-world
country. African and Asia agriculture has been devastated by
heavily-subsidized European crops just as Latin American agriculture
has been crippled by heavily-subsidized North American crops. The
environmental destruction wrought by business in the third world, and
the criminal, dangerous, inhumane working conditions of workers,
mostly
run by manufacturing and mining businesses owned by or dependent on
Western imports, is a global disgrace. 'Free' trade is in fact a
massive fraud designed to further enrich a small number of
multinational corporations and the governments they control. There is
a
reason for the huge, spontaneous global demonstrations against 'free'
trade and globalization: People around the world directly affected by
it know it is a scourge, a power and wealth grab by those who already
have far too much of both. The multinationals are attempting to get
additional 'free' trade agreements signed before the rest of the world
wakes up to the reality of their enormous cost and inequity. They
continue to argue about the theoretical benefits of 'free' trade, and
blame its failings on corrupt third world governments. This is a
smokescreen, and White's article eloquently shows the real motive for
wanting 'free' trade agreements signed: pure greed.
The alternative to 'free' trade is not no trade, it is trade regulated
for the benefit of the world's people. Regulation is not a dirty word,
no matter how aggressively neocons try to paint it as such. It is our
only protection against corporatists who put profit before people.
One of
the
objectives of the ideas of Radical Simplicity is to free us from being
wage slaves. The book suggests the way to do that is to spend less and
save more, so that eventually your savings are enough to live on. I
think that part of the book is naive, since for many low- and
middle-income families, even the most frugal and efficient spending
plan will never get them there.
But the concept got me thinking anew about a very old idea -- the
guaranteed annual income. The concept of a GAI is that, in a just
society, no family should be forced to live below the poverty level.
To
achieve this, a negative
income tax is introduced to increase every family's income to the
poverty level -- say $20,000 per adult and $10,000 per child in the
family. Let's set aside for a minute the question of whether we could
afford to do this -- clearly at present we could not -- and ask the
question whether you could live a comfortable life at that income
level. And if so, whether we could actually allow corporations to
become as 'productive' as they want to be -- employing only the
absolute minimum number of people, anywhere in the world, as cheap as
they can get them -- because no one
in North America would have to work.
Here's a table that shows how the average middle-income American
family
(1.5 adults and 1.0 children) currently spends its 'earned' income,
the
budget that would be available under a guaranteed annual income
scheme,
and some of the methods suggested in Radical Simplicity and elsewhere
that could make that budget sufficient, even ample, thanks to the
additional 40 hours a week you now have available to look after your
home and family, instead of paying others to do it for you.
Current Spending
GAI Budget
How Achieved
Food
$9,000
$7,000
Grow some of your own, eat
unprocessed
and unpackaged foods, become vegetarian
Clothing
3,000
3,000
Make your own
Rent/Mortgage
Maintenance & Utilities
18,000
18,500
Do your own maintenance &
repairs;
Improve energy efficiency; Share tools
Transportation
12,000
4,000
Sell one of your cars, cycle
Recreation
3,000
3,000
Create your own entertainment;
swap
Health, Education
4,500
-
Make it universal and free
Insurance & Savings
6,000
-
No need
Personal Goods
1,500
1,500
Miscellaneous
3,000
3,000
TOTAL
$60,000
$40,000
The key to all of this is that not working as an employee trades
income
for time, and in some cases that time is worth more than the money
we're trading for it (in financial terms alone, not to mention the
social and spiritual value of that recaptured time). The other
essential condition is that we need to re-learn self-sufficiency
skills
that our countries' pioneers had -- sewing, gardening, cooking from
scratch. What do you think -- is it a model worth considering, a goal
for our countries to strive towards as a means of solving a host of
social, economic and environmental problems? Or would the average
family squander the money on gambling, alcohol and drugs, as
conservatives would probably insist?
Busy Process Engineers Invited to No-Cost Technical WebCast Seminars on Semiconductor Manufacturing Process– Series Is Presented by Speedline Technologies –
Busy Process Engineers Invited to No-Cost Technical WebCast Seminars on Semiconductor Manufacturing Process– Series Is Presented by Speedline Technologies –07/01/2004 02:15 AM Busy process engineers are invited to gain in-depth information and
how-to insight about the semiconductor manufacturing process in a
series of no-cost technical webcast seminars, starting July 22 and
running monthly through December. The free seminars are being
presented by Speedline Technologies, Inc. (www.speedlinetech.com), the
world leader for single-source process solutions for the PCB assembly
and semiconductor packaging industries. [PRWEB Jul 1, 2004]
Free Semiconductor Manufacturing Process Seminar Webcast, “Lead Free Process Overview,”: Thursday, July 22, 2004
Due Process, or No Process: Rule of Law at Stake04/20/2004 09:57 AM Our government insists that it can kidnap a foreign national overseas
and hold him forever in a Guantanamo jail, or put him through a
military trial and even execute him. Oh, the government has made a few
cosmetic concessions to law in its plans for military tribunals. But
note that these are unilateral changes and can be withdrawn at any
time.
Our government also insists that U.S. citizens can be declared enemy
combatants and tossed into jail forever, or tried by military
tribunals (and maybe executed), without access to a lawyer or the
courts. If the court endorses this, it's endorsing despotism.
Johnston McLamb Honored Nationally as One of the 50 Best Places to Work SHRM and GPTW Name Top 50 “Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America”
Johnston McLamb Honored Nationally as One of the 50 Best Places to Work SHRM and GPTW Name Top 50 “Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America”06/30/2004 03:11 AM Johnston McLamb CASE Solutions, Inc. has been named among the top 50
Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America. The list was
announced on June 28th before 12,000 human resource (HR) professionals
at the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) 56th Annual
Conference & Exposition in New Orleans [PRWEB Jun 30, 2004] Grok Description matches for Thought process about how black holes work is changing GrokA matches for Thought process about how black holes work is changing
Thought process about how black holes work is changing
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
One
of the value propositions for Knowledge Management is to improve
decision-making. At a recent Toronto KM Consortium meeting, we agreed
to study whether KM actually achieves this objective.
A view into the workings of a chess-playing program that must make
millions of decisions in each game. In this piece we explore the
notion that our lives consist of a vast sequence of choices.
